The Omega Secret (Book Four of the Omega Game Series)

Chapter 12

Didoka

The North Islands

Present day…

If I thought bathing had been a strange type of punishment eating was an entire different torture. I didn’t like to eat a lot of things. Eating during my childhood had been...complicated. Kotani had been the one to always make sure I was eating safe food. I didn’t trust certain flavours and there were some textures that I simply couldn’t eat. Kun knew this about me. He had seen me eating while we traveled together a year ago. Sometimes he joked that while being a boy I’d been pickier than Katala and Nira with my food. For a male I’d been, but that was while I’d hidden my identity from him. He knew better now. Kun knew I hated to eat and was now declaring open war to me. He had brought a large assortment of cheese, fruits, meats and bread. There was mead, wine and water in different pitches that were at the head of the table, placed near him. 

I narrowed my eyes on him.

“Are you not pleased with this?” he asked me, opening a powerful hand and pointing to the table. He smirked, scratching his chin with a thumb and looking at me, “If memory serves me right these are the only types of food I’d remember to see you eating.”

“They are safe, yes,” I murmured and Kun lifted an eyebrow.

“Safe...interesting,”I inwardly cursed myself. Inadvertently I’d given him more information than what I intended. From then on I needed to be more careful with my words. Kun seemed to know I would not be opening a conversation and fixed his silver eyes on the display of food at the table, “ I hand picked them myself, they are of the best quality.”

“Can you pass me the water?” I asked him rudely, ignoring his poignant look.

Kun tapped the table with his fingers while studying me in silence. I tried to read him for the millionth time that night but there was nothing about him that gave me an opening into his mind. His grey eyes were cold but focused intensely on me, analyzing, calculating...waiting. After what it seemed like centuries instead of seconds he finally made his move.  Kun lifted a finger and the water from a pitcher floated in the air and elegantly filled my cup, making me gasp in surprise. I had been expecting that he would move the pitcher in my direction, or maybe even walk over to serve me, but not that he would use his powers so openly. I had seriously underestimated how much he and his brothers had controlled their true selves around us back when we traveled together. 

Trying to calm my wild heartbeat I started my well recited exercise of probing my food. I picked some of the greenest fruits and started cleaning them in the cup of water, letting them soak in the water for a while and then methodically peeling them. I always ignored the cheese and the meat, their textures and colors were easy to manipulate and I couldn’t trust them. I’d been tricked too many times and by then I felt anxious around them. Food was really a torture and I hated that I was blatantly showing my aversion to food in front of Kun.

He remained quiet during my dissection. Only after I tried the first fruit and swallowed it he cleared his throat, making me look up at him. Kun was eyeing me with a frown, his handsome face darkened by the broody expression marking his forehead.

“I would never poison your food,” he stated, shrugging as if we weren’t talking about poison and death, “It doesn’t serve my purpose to hurt you.”

“Whether you poison me or not is a discussion we could have later, your purpose is by far more interesting to me at this time,” I knew I was tiptoeing in a dangerous area. I couldn’t ask him exactly what he was planning on doing with me but he had initiated the discussion and I was too desperate to not grab myself to it and take from him every morsel of information I could get. I bit into a grape and chewed on it for a moment before getting nauseous and spitting it on a plate. Too juicy. I shook my head and refocused on the conversation, “You said we would talk. I happen to be in the mood to talk...about me leaving this place and returning to the Yellow Islands.”

“I’m not interested in having that conversation...yet,” he paused, taking a cup of wine and drinking from it before returning his grey eyes to me, “I’m more interested in getting to know you better.”

“Know me?”

He blinked unimpressed by my question, “Yes, I don’t think I know you that well.”

His words were like a punch to my throat. I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. I’d been my purest self back when I was traveling with him and the others. The person I’d been around him had been the person I’d always wanted to be. Free, happy...myself. And now Kun was efficiently putting our past in doubt. The worst part of it all was I couldn’t blame him. I’ve lied to him, I’ve made him question every single one of our interactions and now there was nothing I could do to fix the rupture. I shook my head, feeling tired all of the sudden.

“This will take us nowhere Kun.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” he rebuked right away, crossing his long, strong fingers while he watched me.

“You already know me,” I said tightly, trying and failing to remain expressionless like him. I was trying so hard to not be a victim of my emotions right there and then but Kun had inflicted real damage to my balance that night. Knowing that I’d tried to claim him had thrown me out of the loop and his games were starting to get him under my skin. If I didn’t change tactics soon he would be getting more from me than what I’d ever intended to give away. With a sigh I dropped any pretenses of trying to eat and rested my back on the chair, staring at him openly, “But if you want me to play this game with you by all means let’s play. What do you want to know about me?

He c****d his head to a side watching me silently, analyzing me and my new move. Sometimes in war a general only attacked if it knew it would lead him to victory. Opposing him right then would only throw us in circles and being more flexible would give me an opening. An opportunity to understand him better. Kotani had always said to play smarter, not stronger and I was now finally realizing what he had been trying to tell me. Kun was a worthy opponent, one that required me to step up and see things from his point of view. 

A muscle in his jaw twitched, the only indication I had managed to disrupt his well crafted strategy. Then Kun gave me a smile, right before attacking. It was a horrifying smile. If sharks could smile, they would have smiled just like Kun after scenting blood in the water.

“What made you go to Naccanash disguised as a monk?” he asked, deceptively calm. The hairs at the back of my neck stood at their ends. There was something about Kun’s calmness that reminded me of the calm before a storm. The silence before a wave crushed against a rock. The heaviness in the air right before you knew true fear.

Avert. Avert. Run away...My mind was screaming at me to not answer that question. It was a trap on its own. There was simply not a right answer. And that was exactly why he was asking me. Kun was providing me the opportunity to defeat me and as much as I hated him for being so cold I couldn’t help but to recognize the brilliance of his move.

With a heavy sigh I looked away from him. I needed to be careful with my answer. Too much of the truth and I could compromise Kotani’s secret. Too much of a lie and I could push my luck too far. Balance. I needed balance. Slowly I looked at my nails but controlled the impulse of biting on them while I started talking, “I did what I did for someone that needs my help. I went to Naccanash to study at the Hidden Library and  try to find some important information that I needed. Then I met Katala and Nira. The rest you know.”

Silence.

Grey eyes meet me coldly from across the table devoid of emotions. The silence continued for what seemed like a lifetime. It was burdensome, like a gigantic boulder pressing on my chest. He finally lifted the weight with a simple tilt of his head.

“Did you ever find the information you needed?”  ke asked, again deceptively calm. What Kun was actually asking was:  was it worth it? Was it lying and breaking my trust really worth it? It was that knife twisting the wound again. It made me angry. It made me temperamental.

“Do you care?” I asked in return, giving the punch back. Kun’s lips twisted cruelly and obrehendedly he interlaced his fingers over his strong middle.

“You got yourself in danger, shaved your head and assumed the identity of a man,” right there at the end his voice turned lower, threatening. If I didn’t know better I felt that from the entire list of my wrongdoings assuming the identity of a man was the one thing that he had hated the most. Hmm, how curious… “After all the risks you took I thought you would have been more assertive about your mission. And still you followed Katala and Nira, even if it went against your interests.”

“I did what I needed to do. Katala and Nira needed me more at the time,” I said and it was a mistake. He narrowed his eyes.

“You don’t strike me like someone that puts the needs of others over your own,” his remark made me clench my jaw.

“You don’t know anything about me Kun.”

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows,” his words were like a slap to my face, keeping me in place, “There is nothing you can say or do that could make me change my opinion of you.”

“Then let me go,” I bit back, trembling in my seat, “ I will always be the liar that kept you in the darkness and pushed you into rutting like a beast. You will always hate me for what I did and I will always hate you for seeing me like something that I’m not.”

“Even liars have their use,” and those words, however devoid of poison and emotion, managed to hurt me more than anything he had said before. Kun got on his feet then, staring down at me, as if I were an ant easy to crush under his thumb, “You are lucky princess Aldidokala, very lucky that I have some use for you. Follow me.”

Kun turned around then and I moved fast after him, following the heavy scent of his aggression with a lowered head. It was a dense scent, like that of a humid forest where one couldn’t breathe their own smell. It was scary. It was destabilizing. Not even once Kun looked back at me. I was to be ignored, left to lick my wounds for however long he wanted. Kun would give me the reprieve to build myself up, only to crash me again, before he could return to take more from me. It was exactly what any conqueror would do. In silence we walked through the long halls, our steps echoing against the cold walls. I rubbed my arms while he guided me through the massive labyrinth that was his palace. It was cold there and so very confusing. I tried to remember landmarks, curves and turns but there had been so many halls that I was suspicious  Kun changed the structure of the walls every time we crossed a level. 

I was starting to believe my theory was right when Kun kept heading straight into a wall. I started biting one of my nails, looking back and forward between the blue icy wall and Kun. He wasn’t stopping, oh Gods he wasn’t stopping. At the last moment, a step away from crashing against the wall, Kun lifted a single finger and the wall opened like a curtain. It didn’t even make a noise, it just moved, letting us pass easily into a room powerfully brightened by a thousand candlesticks.

I stopped right in my tracks, eyeing the room with wide open eyes.

“By the Gods…” I murmured, taking the first step inside.